标签： Europe

As Armenia prepares for its critical parliamentary election on June 7, the small South Caucasus nation of 3 million people finds itself caught in a sharp geopolitical standoff between Moscow and the Western bloc. At the center of the contest is incumbent Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who is seeking re-election on a platform of deeper European integration, a policy that has drawn escalating economic pressure from Russia, Armenia’s longstanding largest trading partner.

Pashinyan’s shift toward the West has defined his tenure since he rose to power in the 2018 revolution. Over his time in office, he has overseen a steady reorientation of Armenia’s foreign policy: passing legislation to launch the EU accession process, advancing a US-brokered peace deal with neighboring Azerbaijan that earned him an endorsement from former US President Donald Trump, and hosting a high-profile summit of EU leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Yerevan earlier this year. But his policy concessions to Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region have become his biggest domestic liability.

The mountainous enclave, once home to 120,000 ethnic Armenians, was seized by Azerbaijani forces in 2023. Pashinyan’s willingness to cede control of the region and his refusal to push aggressively for the release of detained former Nagorno-Karabakh leaders has left a deep rift in Armenian politics. Recent polling shows public opinion on the peace deal is deeply split, with 44% supporting the agreement and 41% opposing it. Pashinyan’s approval rating has plummeted from 54% in 2021 to roughly 30% today, opening the door for a fragmented but formidable opposition.

The opposition bloc is led by two former Armenian presidents, Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, both fixtures of the pre-2018 political order that maintained close alignment with Moscow. Their core platform calls for a full restoration of deep military and economic ties with Russia, framed as the only guarantee of Armenia’s national security. Pashinyan’s most high-profile challenger is Russian-based billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, who is currently under house arrest on charges of plotting to overthrow the government and is running his campaign through his nephew.

Latest polling from the International Republican Institute puts Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party ahead with 32% of the vote, while nearly 40% of registered voters report trusting no political candidate at all. While the combined opposition could match Pashinyan’s support if unified, their fragmented structure leaves them unlikely to defeat the incumbent on election day.

Looming largest over the vote is direct interference from the Kremlin. In the lead-up to June 7, Russian President Vladimir Putin has explicitly warned Armenia of the economic consequences of moving closer to the West, drawing a parallel to the crisis in Ukraine that he linked to EU accession efforts. Those warnings have been followed by tangible trade measures: in the two weeks before the election, Russia banned imports of key Armenian exports including flowers, cognac, mineral water, and fresh produce.

Russia remains Armenia’s top trading partner, accounting for 36% of the country’s total foreign trade in 2025. Haykaz Fanyan, a senior analyst at the Armenian Centre for Socio-Economic Studies, confirmed that Moscow’s actions are a deliberate attempt to sway the election outcome. “The only way Russia can impact Armenia now is economic,” Fanyan explained, noting that Armenia has already dramatically reduced its dependence on Russian military equipment, with 95% of recent military imports coming from India, France, China and other partners. Still, economic leverage remains a powerful weapon for the Kremlin: Russia supplies Armenia with natural gas at $177.50 per 1,000 cubic meters, far below the European market price of more than $600 that Pashinyan would face if ties with Moscow break down completely.

Putin has also publicly pressured Pashinyan to hold a national referendum on whether Armenia should leave the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) — a customs bloc that delivers significant economic benefits to the country — to pursue EU membership. Pashinyan has avoided the challenge, noting that Armenia has not yet secured EU candidate status and full membership remains a distant long-term goal. “We will continue to work within the EAEU until the choice between its current membership and the EU becomes unavoidable,” he said, framing the current referendum call as purely theoretical.

The EU has not remained on the sidelines in the face of Russian pressure. Shortly before the election, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pledged €50 million in new support for Armenia, explicitly accusing Moscow of “weaponising economic relations for political pressure” and announcing that the EU would ease trade barriers for the Armenian goods targeted by Russian import bans.

Pashinyan has centered his campaign around the slogan “Stand for Peace!”, but the election cycle has been marked by bitter domestic confrontation, most notably between the prime minister and displaced ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh. One high-profile incident saw Pashinyan use offensive language against civil activist Artur Osipyan, who was subsequently arrested on charges of obstructing the campaign and launched a hunger strike in protest. Opposition figures have accused Pashinyan of increasingly authoritarian tactics, including misusing state resources to pressure civil servants into attending his rallies and spreading a climate of fear among voters. “I cannot remember any campaign as tense as this one,” said Artur Khachatryan, an opposition MP from the Armenia Alliance.

For Pashinyan, the campaign rests on his vision of a “Real Armenia”: a country at peace with Azerbaijan, integrated into European institutions, and free from the corruption and authoritarianism that marked the pre-2018 order. While his support has fallen sharply, many voters still see him as the only alternative to a return to the old Kremlin-aligned system. For ordinary Armenian voters heading to the polls, the core question transcends simple geopolitical framing: are they willing to bear the immediate economic costs of Pashinyan’s pro-Western shift, costs that Russia has deliberately amplified, for a European future that remains years or decades away? On June 7, Armenian voters will deliver their answer.

A deadly stabbing case in southern Britain has sparked a sharp diplomatic and political clash after a top United States official inserted inflammatory rhetoric into the domestic tragedy, drawing public rebuke from 10 Downing Street.

The tragedy dates back to December, when 18-year-old university student Henry Nowak was stabbed to death in Southampton by 23-year-old Vickrum Digwa. Digwa, who used an 8-inch (21-centimeter) Sikh dagger in the attack, falsely told responding police officers that Nowak — a white British man — had carried out a racist assault against him. In a tragic procedural misstep, officers initially treated the fatally wounded Nowak as a suspect before recognizing his critical injury and attempting emergency resuscitation. This week, Digwa, a British Sikh, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 21 years.

Despite the fact that both the victim and perpetrator are British citizens, anti-immigration and far-right groups in the UK have seized on the case to advance their divisive political agenda. Last week, a demonstration organized around the killing that drew far-right figures turned violent, with protesters pelting Southampton police officers with chairs, metal cans, rocks and flares.

The conflict escalated this week when U.S. Vice President JD Vance weighed in with incendiary comments on social platform X. Vance called for “righteous anger” over Nowak’s murder, and baselessly linked the killing to what he called a “mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.” The U.S. State Department doubled down on the divisive framing a day earlier, echoing unsubstantiated far-right claims of “two-tier” policing in the UK — an assertion that the justice system intentionally discriminates against white people — and framing the case as a “glaring symptom of civilizational decline.”

In a formal public statement released Friday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office firmly condemned Vance’s remarks, accusing the U.S. vice president of attempting to interfere in British democratic processes and stoke sectarian division on UK streets. “The Nowak family are grieving after Henry’s horrific murder. They have said they do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension. We should be respecting their wishes,” the Downing Street statement read. “Our politics should bring people together even in the most terrible of circumstances. That is who we are as a country.”

Ed Davey, leader of the UK’s centrist opposition Liberal Democrats, joined the condemnation, arguing that all British leaders must reject efforts to politicize Nowak’s death for partisan gain, regardless of whether those attempts come from U.S. Make America Great Again-aligned politicians like Vance or their far-right allies in the UK. Hard-right UK figures including Reform UK leader Nigel Farage have already amplified the unsubstantiated “two-tier policing” claim, which British officials note has no backing in national crime or policing statistics.

The victim’s own family has repeatedly pushed back against attempts to co-opt the tragedy for political gain. Mark Nowak, Henry’s father, has emphasized that the killing is not a story about racism or religious division, echoing the family’s wish that his son’s death be used to push for safer public spaces rather than fuel more hatred and societal rift. Currently, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, the UK’s independent watchdog for police misconduct, is conducting a formal investigation into the initial response by Southampton officers to the stabbing.

Amid ongoing confusion sparked by conflicting White House directives on U.S. troop levels in Europe, the U.S. military remains stuck waiting for clear guidance from the Pentagon — a state of uncertainty that has upended the lives of service members and already drained tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, two senior U.S. defense officials confirmed to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters.

The chaos traces back to a diplomatic dispute between former President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over the Iran conflict earlier this year. Shortly after Trump ordered 5,000 U.S. troops withdrawn from Europe, he reversed course and announced he would deploy the same number of troops to Poland, leaving NATO allies stunned and military planners scrambling. The Trump administration has maintained that planned troop reductions in Europe have long been in the works and coordinated with alliance partners, but the sudden about-face on deployments has thrown that planning into disarray.

Two weeks before the officials spoke with AP, Trump announced the Poland deployment on social media — a decision that came on the exact same day the Pentagon had formally issued orders to cancel a scheduled rotation of troops bound for the country, one defense official recalled. At the time of the cancellation order, the unit’s heavy equipment was already en route to Europe. U.S. Transportation Command, the branch responsible for moving troops and military gear across global supply lines, confirmed that just moving that equipment to Poland already cost $32 million.

The repeated last-minute changes have forced military planners to “retroactively engineer” new policy to match the president’s latest public statements, the official added.

The 4,000-strong 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team from the 1st Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Texas, had its rotational deployment to Poland scrapped in a Pentagon memo issued in early May, with European allies only notified of the change two weeks later. Hundreds of troops already received pre-deployment orders and were just hours from boarding flights to Poland when they were told to stand down, while roughly 1,000 advance personnel already in Eastern Europe remain in limbo, with no official confirmation of whether they will be recalled to the U.S.

Military leaders are still awaiting detailed instructions from the Pentagon on how to implement Trump’s order to deploy 5,000 troops to Poland. Current working assumptions within the defense department suggest the troops will be drawn from units already stationed in Europe, rather than adding a new deployment from the continental U.S.

Beyond the $32 million already spent to move the canceled rotation’s equipment, additional unbudgeted costs are likely mounting. U.S. Transportation Command had chartered a dedicated vessel to carry the incoming unit’s gear to Poland and return the outgoing rotation’s equipment to the U.S. It remains unclear how much of the $32 million could have been saved if the cancellation order had been issued before the deployment process began, but defense experts note that any unscheduled repositioning of personnel and gear was not included in the Pentagon’s annual budget.

Calculating the full cost of the last-minute deployment changes is extremely complex due to the number of overlapping moving parts, according to Joe Costa, former senior Pentagon official and current director of the Atlantic Council’s Forward Defense program. While the direct cash outlay is likely to be a relatively small share of the rotation’s total baseline cost, the broader harm to troop readiness is far more significant: units that spent months training for a specific deployment in Poland may now be reassigned to entirely different missions, eroding their preparedness.

John Deni, a senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council and former U.S. military planner focused on European force posture, added that military transportation contracts with private vendors almost always include penalty clauses that impose extra fees for last-minute cancellations or changes of plan. “The real question is what additional costs we incur from sending people and gear back prematurely, tearing up existing arrangements and scrapping months of detailed planning,” Deni explained. It remains unclear whether the Pentagon can recoup any of these unexpected expenses, and the department has not responded to repeated requests for comment on the total cost of the plan changes. The White House also declined to comment, referring all questions to the Defense Department.

Pentagon officials have repeatedly framed planned European troop reductions as part of a long-planned “comprehensive, multilayered process” designed to shift more defense responsibility to European allies. But the last-minute changes also scuttled a separate planned deployment of a long-range rocket and missile battalion to Germany last month.

When Trump first publicly threatened to withdraw 5,000 troops from Europe, Pentagon planners initially considered pulling the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, a permanently stationed unit based in Germany, according to one defense official. That plan was ultimately set aside in favor of canceling the planned Poland rotation — a decision Trump upended weeks later with his new deployment order.

Costa noted that withdrawing the Germany-based permanent regiment would carry an even far higher price tag, likely costing billions of dollars. The U.S. currently lacks dedicated domestic infrastructure and housing to accommodate the full regiment and their families, so any forced withdrawal would require breaking up the unit, dispersing equipment across multiple bases, and reassigning personnel to unrelated posts — a process that inflicts lasting harm to unit readiness.

Beyond fiscal costs, the constant uncertainty has also taken a toll on troop and family morale. Service members and their families often begin planning for deployments months or even years in advance, so last-minute cancellations and shifts are deeply disruptive, Deni said. “This is the last thing you want to put military families through,” he noted.

Multiple long-term options are still on the table, including permanently moving some Germany-based units to Poland, but that type of large-scale infrastructure and force shift would take years to complete and carry additional hundreds of millions in construction and repositioning costs. To date, no final decision has been made, leaving the entire U.S. force posture in Europe in limbo.

The chaotic deployment changes come at an especially difficult time for the U.S. Army, which is already facing a major budget shortfall estimated between $2 billion and $6 billion, according to an Army official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The service has already been forced to cut back on routine training courses for troops across the country to conserve funds, a cut first reported by ABC News.

In a formal statement, an Army spokesperson said the service has issued guidance to all commands to “make tough and sound resource decisions that optimize and prioritize resources toward their most critical requirements, to include major training and readiness events.”

The budget strain has been exacerbated by multiple unplanned additional missions assigned to the service in recent months, including deployment of National Guard troops to Washington D.C. and a bolstered border security presence along the U.S.-Mexico border, alongside the U.S. role in the Iran conflict. The Department of Homeland Security has agreed to reimburse the Army for border mission costs, and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told lawmakers at a May 15 hearing he expected reimbursement “within a week or two.” As of the reporting date, no reimbursement has been processed.

U.S. Army Europe has already responded to the budget crunch by scaling back all non-combat training support and focusing exclusively on high-priority core missions to stretch remaining funds, according to the military official.

(Reporting from London by Burrows)

Speaking from the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a firm rejection of a direct, face-to-face negotiation proposal from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, arguing that recent actions and the tone of the Ukrainian leader’s overture have eliminated any possibility of productive high-level talks.

The proposal, delivered in an unprecedented open letter from Zelenskyy to Putin this past Thursday, marked the first public direct communication from the Ukrainian leader to his Russian counterpart since Moscow launched its full-scale military incursion into Ukraine in 2022. Beyond the meeting request, the letter also included a broad, harsh critique of Putin’s 26-year tenure in power, which Putin characterized as deeply provocative and unconstructive.

Putin tied his rejection directly to a May 22 drone strike on a college dormitory in Russia-controlled Luhansk Oblast, which the Kremlin says left 21 people dead and dozens more injured. Questioning the intent behind Zelenskyy’s overture, he asked: “Is it a way to create conditions for personal meetings and talks, or create an environment which makes any personal meetings impossible? I think it’s the second.” With that context, he reiterated, there is simply “no point” in holding the proposed meeting.

Alongside rejecting the immediate meeting call, Putin also turned aside Zelenskyy’s push for an immediate ceasefire, arguing that Moscow is seeking a permanent, comprehensive settlement to the conflict, which is now entering its fifth year, rather than a short-term temporary truce. He reaffirmed that Russia remains open to reaching a negotiated compromise aligned with the understandings reached during last year’s summit between he and former U.S. President Donald Trump in Anchorage, Alaska, and emphasized that any final deal requires Kyiv to formally accept those terms. “Naturally, the Ukrainian side would like us to suspend the advances made by Russian troops,” he noted. “But it would be better to end the war by agreeing to the compromises that were discussed in Anchorage.”

The rejection came amid shifting geopolitical dynamics in the conflict, with Zelenskyy himself recently acknowledging that U.S. priorities have moved away from the conflict amid intensifying tensions related to the Iran conflict, and that Kyiv cannot afford to wait passively for Washington to refocus its attention on ending the fighting. For his part, former President Trump has previously stated that a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy would be a positive development. This is not the first time a meeting proposal has fallen through: Putin previously invited Zelenskyy to hold talks in Moscow, an invitation the Ukrainian leader rejected outright, and Putin only last month opened the door to a possible meeting in a third country — but only on the condition that a finalized agreement is already ready to be signed by both parties.

Beyond the conflict discussion, Putin used his keynote address at the forum, Russia’s high-profile annual economic gathering often compared to the World Economic Forum in Davos, to lay out his vision for a shifting global order and push back against criticisms of Russia’s economic performance amid prolonged conflict and sweeping Western sanctions. He argued that developing economies have claimed a steadily larger share of global output, while the economic weight of Western powers has contracted significantly, and accused the West of destabilizing the global financial system through its unilateral sanctions on Moscow. He emphasized that by freezing Russian sovereign assets held abroad, Western nations have irreparably damaged global trust in the U.S. dollar and euro, noting that any country could now face the same fate of having its legitimate Western-held assets seized unexpectedly. “The roots of the current global turbulence lie in the transition from a vertical, hierarchical model, which served the interests of a small number of states, to a more complex, distributed and multipolar one,” he said. “Russia views global changes not only as a threat but also as immense opportunities. And to capitalize on them, we aim to act swiftly and pragmatically.”

Putin called for a complete overhaul of the global financial system, urging the creation of a “modern, flexible and responsible financial architecture — free from risks, bans and barriers.” He pushed back against widespread assessments that Russia’s economy is struggling amid the conflict, highlighting that Russia’s national debt is only a small fraction of that carried by major Western economies, and that its budget deficit is far narrower than those seen in the West. Despite his optimistic framing, Russia’s economic outlook has darkened in recent months as the conflict drags on, forcing the government to raise domestic taxes and expand internal borrowing to keep deficit levels in check. During a Thursday media session, Putin argued that claims of a struggling Russian economy are overblown, explaining that recent cooling measures were intentional policy moves designed to rein in persistent inflation.

Staged to showcase Russia’s economic resilience and attract new foreign investment amid its diplomatic and economic estrangement from the West, this year’s forum has leaned heavily into the Kremlin’s stated goal of building a multipolar global order. While Western officials and most Western business leaders have boycotted the event since the 2022 full-scale incursion, Russia has drawn high-level delegations from across the Global East and Global South: Saudi Arabia sent a large official delegation this year, the presidents of Uzbekistan and Tanzania delivered addresses, and Chinese Vice President also gave a major speech on Friday. Notably, a U.S. official, Rodney Mims Cook Jr., head of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, is attending the event, marking the first such high-level U.S. attendance in years.

In additional comments Thursday, Putin acknowledged that Ukrainian drone strikes have successfully penetrated Russian defensive lines multiple times in recent weeks, and pledged to upgrade and strengthen the country’s air defense networks to counter the growing threat. “To our regret, some of them break through,” he told reporters. “Russia has an air defense system, we need to improve it, strengthen it, and we will do that.” Just hours before the forum officially opened on Wednesday, a Ukrainian drone strike sparked a large fire at an oil terminal in St. Petersburg and also targeted a nearby Russian naval base, underscoring the reach of Kyiv’s drone capabilities deep inside Russian territory.

In a significant escalation of international pressure on two far-right Israeli cabinet members, Ireland has officially implemented travel bans barring Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich from entering the country, Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin has confirmed.

The sanctions, confirmed by Ireland’s Department of Justice this week, follow formal approval from the Irish government outside standard cabinet procedures. In an official statement, a spokesperson for Irish Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan said immigration officials across the country have received explicit instruction to reject any entry applications from Ben-Gvir and Smotrich should either attempt to travel to Ireland.

The move by Dublin is not an isolated action. It builds on a growing wave of international pushback against the two Israeli politicians, who have a long record of inflammatory rhetoric and actions targeting Palestinian communities. Last year, the United Kingdom became the first Western government to impose formal sanctions on the pair, alongside Australia, Norway, Canada and New Zealand. Those sanctions included entry bans and asset freezes, marking the first time sitting Israeli ministers faced punitive measures from Western powers. At the time, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy accused Ben-Gvir and Smotrich of “inciting extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights.”

Most recently, France implemented a unilateral entry ban on Ben-Gvir last month. The ban came after Ben-Gvir released a video mocking bound pro-Palestinian activists who had been seized by Israeli soldiers while attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza via sea. The video sparked global outrage, with condemnation coming not just from capitals across Europe and North America, but even from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who publicly stated that Ben-Gvir’s actions were “not in line with Israel’s values.”

Speaking at the EU-Western Balkans Summit held in Montenegro on Friday, Martin doubled down on Ireland’s position, arguing that the words and actions of the two Israeli ministers amount to an open call for the displacement and elimination of Palestinian people from their historic homeland. The Taoiseach told attendees that Ireland will push for the European Union to adopt its own collective sanctions against the pair, a position already endorsed by France, Spain and Italy.

“That’s again something that the international community needs to take on board and we will be pursuing that with others,” Martin said. “In my view, their behaviour justifies sanctions at EU level as well, and that’s something that we will raise, whether we can get sufficient support across the European Union is a different matter.”

Ireland’s announcement comes amid a fresh escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip, nearly 20 months after the outbreak of the ongoing war. Despite a US-brokered ceasefire agreement that took effect last October, Israel launched a new round of airstrikes in Gaza this week that the Israeli military says killed four senior leaders of Hamas’s General Security Apparatus. Israeli officials have repeatedly accused Hamas of using lulls in fighting to rearm and reconstruct its military infrastructure.

The current conflict traces back to the October 7, 2023 attack led by Hamas on southern Israel, which killed roughly 1,200 people and took 251 others hostage. Israel’s large-scale military response in Gaza has resulted in a staggering humanitarian toll: Gaza’s Ministry of Health reports that more than 72,950 people have been killed in Israeli strikes and ground operations since the campaign began.